"Colin W Kingsbury" wrote in
link.net:


"Dude" wrote in message
...

And then we could use the money to buy gear and pay controllers
instead of creating an all new department to manage the fee system!


Up here in Taxachusetts there's a long-standing feud over tolls on the
Massachusetts Turnpike. The law that authorized the bond issue to
build the pike said, tolls will be charged until the bonds are paid
off, then the tolls shall end. Well, the bonds were paid off more than
10 years ago, but the tollbooths persist. A couple years back when the
debate flared up, the tollbooth defenders said, "well, if we quit
collecting tolls, the state will need to come up with that $200
million some other way." Funny part is, the accountants opened the
books and figured that staffing and maintaining the tollbooths cost
the state about 60 cents on every dollar of tolls they collected. So
the net cost to the state of shutting down the tolls would be only $80
million.

Of course, the tollbooths remain. I feel quite certain that long after
the nuclear war with China, when the whole world devolves into a Mad
Maxian opera of barbarity, the last functioning piece of the
government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will be running the
tollbooths on the Masspike...

-cwk.



Has anyone ever taken the Massachussetts to court about keeping the tolls?
Many years ago there was a 10 cent toll on the Southern State Parkway on
Long Island, NY just before it reached the Cross County Parkway. One day
they raised the toll to 25 cents. One of the commuters was a lawyer who
looked up the statute authorizing the toll. The toll was supposed to go
away once the parkway had been paid for. It had. He sued. The toll booth
was removed.

--
Marty Shapiro
Silicon Rallye Inc.

(remove SPAMNOT to email me)